Slack is holding its Frontiers conference virtually this week – like many other tech giants have this year – and it’s introducing some new features to the platform that will make communication easier amongst users.
The platform is also getting ready to introduce Instagram-like stories and push-to-talk audio into its communications software before the end of 2020. Both features are being added due to the shift to remote working during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Slack Testing New Features for its Platform
Slack also detailed some new features in a press release and blog post today titled “Exploring better ways to work”:
“We’re more than seven months into the global shift to remote work and it’s clear there is much more we can do to improve the way we work together in this new world. For starters, we know there are better ways to collaborate than simply falling into the copy-paste trap of moving physical behaviors to the digital world—back-to-back video conferences all day, every day are a uniquely exhausting way to work. On the other hand, people miss the unplanned, spontaneous interactions in the office that helped us stay aligned, make quick decisions and spark new ideas.”
Slack is still testing how stories will show up, but these short videos should appear alongside channels, allowing people to use them as a way to check in with each other or even as a form of status updates.
Alongside the new stories feature, Slack is also planning to introduce instant audio. It will work in a similar way to push-to-talk, as a feature to enable spontaneous calls with co-workers within channels.
The platform is also introducing new features to the application which will help users to communicate with partners outside of their company in a secure way. The first is Connect DMs (direct messages), which allows users inside an organization to collaborate with anyone outside their company simply by sending an invite.
The company is also adding a new feature to help keep spam messages at a minimum. The platform is adding Verified Organizations, to help ensure users that they are dealing with someone from an organization they trust and work with before they start exchanging information on Slack.
Though the platform is introducing the new features this week, they won’t be widely available until next year as the company wants to make sure this is used for business purposes only in a secure way.
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